


Guess

by TinyFakeFanficRock



Series: The Maisie Files [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 03:45:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9366578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinyFakeFanficRock/pseuds/TinyFakeFanficRock
Summary: Arcade learns a hard lesson about what happens when you assume.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the Fallout Kink Meme.

Arcade had been reading a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories lately, and he was particularly impressed by Sherlock's ability to figure out so much about people he had only just met. So when one of his experiments took far longer than expected to decant, Arcade entertained himself by seeing how much he could guess about the people who availed themselves of the Old Mormon Fort's services.

It wasn't much of a challenge. The guy in a striped shirt with a knife wound was pretty obviously a King who'd gotten into it with a Freeside thug; the gaunt young woman with the blown pupils and the shakes was probably a few hits of Psycho away from joining the Fiends, and the rumpled teenager who couldn't stand up unassisted had probably just had his first taste of Dixon's whiskey. Freeside, Arcade reflected, was a terribly depressing place to play this game.

Then came a pair he'd never seen before, a guy in a red beret with a scoped rifle -- one of the NCR snipers, then -- and a red-haired girl in battered, oversized leather armor, carrying a rifle of her own. The guy looked about his own age, maybe a shade older. The kid looked about fifteen. They both looked like they'd been in a hell of a fight. Arcade put the pieces together so quickly he impressed himself: the guy had been teaching his daughter how to shoot out in the desert, and they'd run across something a little more serious than bloatflies.

They spoke to Julie for a moment, then she turned to him and waved him over. "Arcade, we're a little shorthanded this morning; would you help these two since you're free?"

He hadn't finished nodding his assent before the kid stepped forward. The top of her head didn't quite come up to his shoulders; if she was five feet tall, it was only barely. _Yeah, about fifteen; still has one growth spurt to go._ "Hi, Arcade. My name's Maisie." She stuck her hand out to shake, then considered the mostly-dried blood on it and withdrew it with a sheepish smile.

"Nice to meet you, Maisie." He led them into a quiet tent, then decided, on a whim, to show off how much he'd already figured out. "Should I start with you or your dad here?"

The two of them exchanged incredulous looks. Arcade took this as a sign of a successful deduction -- until the girl started giggling wildly. "So, Boone, what was it like becoming a dad at six?"

These two were only six years apart? Well, damn.

The sniper -- Boone, she'd said -- scowled at her. "If I was your dad, you'd actually wear a goddamn helmet."

She rolled her eyes at him and turned back to Arcade. "So, um, how old do you think I _am_?"

He hastily revised his guess upward. "Seventeen?"

She sighed. "Try twenty. I wish I were taller."

"And I wish your shortcuts didn't involve Deathclaws. Guess neither of us gets our wish."

Arcade sputtered. "Wait, _Deathclaws_? Seriously? You two look way too ... _alive_ to have had a run-in with those."

Boone reached into his pack and produced a large object, which he dropped on the table with a heavy, fleshy thud. It took Arcade a moment to realize he was looking at a severed Deathclaw hand. "Believe us now?"

Arcade could only stare.

"There were five of them, but we killed three and shot one's knees out before the last one figured out where we were," Maisie explained with a cheery air that made him seriously question her sanity. "It got a little sticky after that, though." She pulled her shirt up to just under her breasts and peeled back some bloodstained rags, revealing three parallel gashes across her torso. "Good thing I'm quick on my feet and Boone is handy with a machete."

Good thing, indeed: They had a few deep cuts each, but nothing that antiseptic and a few stitches wouldn't fix. Arcade patched them up and had just left the tent when Maisie spoke up again and the temptation to eavesdrop overwhelmed him.

"Gah, Boone, that doctor was too much. It was weird enough when people just thought you were my boyfriend. Can I start introducing you as my brother? You are kinda like a big brother to me, you know."

"Fine by me."

"Wait, if he thought you were my dad, and he thought I was seventeen, that means he had to have thought you were at least thirty-two, and that's if you'd gotten an early start, so more likely he thought you were well into your thirties, and you do look a little older than you actually are, but not _that_ much --"

"Can we not talk about this anymore?"

"Ooooh, did I hit a nerve?"

"You don't actually have to bother me like a kid sister, you know."

"I don't get why anybody gets all worked up about people thinking they're older. It's better than getting treated like a kid all the time."

"It's not that. I just don't want to talk about being anybody's dad."

"Oh." There was clearly a grim story in the heavy silence that followed, and Arcade refused to try to guess it. "Shit. I'm sorry. I didn't think."

"Not your fault the doc didn't keep his dumbass idea to himself."

Dumbass? _Dumbass?_ From that NCR knuckle-dragger? Arcade strode off, sulking the entire way back to his experiment. This never happened to Sherlock Holmes.


End file.
